| WHITE BOOK 2006 >> FIFTH PART >>CHAPTER 1 | |||
CHAPTER 1. - A VERITABLE “MORAL AND LEGAL BLACK HOLE” IN THE TERRITORY ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED BY THE US NAVAL BASE AT GUANTANAMO The tragic events of 11th September 2001 served as a pretext for unleashing an active imperialist offensive aimed at world domination, an offensive devised, planned and prepared before that date by the neo-conservatives and militarists who hold sway in the United States today. In the heat of that offensive, the Bush administration set in motion a wave of harshly repressive measures, restricting domestic civil and political liberties but, most importantly, threatening the right of many Third World countries to self-determination, development and peace. In the name of an alleged war on terrorism, the government of the Superpower has waged imperialist wars of conquest to consolidate its global supremacy and seize control of strategic resources. In the process, it has ridden roughshod over the most basic precepts of International Humanitarian Law and has seriously and persistently encroached respect for and protection of basic human rights, including those to life and freedom. The violation of the human rights of thousands of foreign nationals arbitrarily imprisoned in the United States is compounded by the legal and existential limbo in which over 500 people, including minors, are living. They are arbitrarily detained in inhuman conditions at the Naval Base dug in at Guantanamo, territory in Cuba which the United States has illegally occupied for over 100 years —a permanent affront to the dignity and sovereign will of the Cuban people. After the war in Afghanistan, the Government of the United States decided to house its prisoners in the "war on terrorism" at the Guantanamo base. In the Official Note, the Government of the Republic of Cuba welcomed the US authorities’ public announcements that the prisoners at the base would be given proper, humane treatment and expressed its willingness to cooperate with medical services, if these were needed. However, the situation at the base has been quite other. What has been created and still exists there is, in terms of massive and flagrant violations, of human rights, one of the worst regimes in modern times; hundreds are being deprived even of their consciousness of being human. On this site, occupied against the express wishes of the Cuban people, hundreds of foreign prisoners are arbitrarily detained, subjected to indescribable humiliations, totally isolated, with no means of communicating with their families or arranging for proper legal defence. The charges against the majority of the detainees remain shrouded in mystery. A few of the handful that have been freed have recounted the horrors of this concentration camp, including torture as well as cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment. A confidential report on the Guantanamo detention centre by the Red Cross International Committee— later leaked to the US press— gives the reader an idea of just how bad the irregularities and cruel violations committed in the US Naval Base in Guantanamo are — they are comparable only to what happened in Nazi concentration camps. The report was the result of a June 2004 inspection of the detention centre and it voiced harsh criticisms of the place, saying that there are doctors and other health workers there who collaborate in the planning the interrogations which is a “flagrant violation of medical ethics”. Those doctors and other workers spend their time gathering information about the weaknesses and mental health of the detainees. They obtain this information either through direct contact with the prisoners or through the so-called Behavioural Sciences Consulting Team (BSCT). Members of the latter are psychologists and specially trained staff who advise those who run the interrogations. The ICRC found a system designed to break the will of the approximately 550 detainees by using “humiliating acts, isolation, extremes of temperature, persistent loud noise, music and forcing the prisoners to stand or kneel for long periods”. They also said that the methods used are increasingly “refined and repressive”. As the ICRC report says, “building such a system whose declared aim is to gain intelligence information can only be looked on as creating a system for deliberately applying cruel, unusual or degrading treatment and other forms of torture”. To prove that this is not a recent, new or isolated instance, the report refers to another January 2003 confidential document— which was never made public—which also mentioned “psychological torture”. Recently broadcast videos also show the beatings and psychological torture handed out to the detainees. According to two British former detainees, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, “Muslim prisoners are forced to strip from the waist down, remain like that for days on end and be “interrogated” and humiliated by woman using a new kind of “sexual torture”. Whichever way you look at it, notions such as that of "illegal combatants" or the setting up of judicial aberrations such as the so-called "ad-hoc military tribunals", devised by the United States to justify the dehumanizing treatment meted out to its prisoners of war, are breaches of International Law and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. These “courts” would be empowered to impose the death sentence and there would be no appeal. They would lack any vestige of independence and would infringe the rights of the defendants to choose a lawyer or otherwise arrange a proper defence. They would admit evidence possibly obtained under torture or duress. The international community proclaims its condemnation of the situation at the Naval Base the United States maintains illegally on Cuban soil at Guantanamo, now converted into a facility for holding prisoners without trial or cause, without lawyers and without the least sign of due process. All of these atrocities are carried out in the permanent climate of fear and hysteria, whipped up and maintained with alerts and arbitrary measures, which the right-wing fundamentalists now in power are imposing on the US public. The war on terrorism cannot be fought by terrorist methods which entail denying citizens their rights, or by availing oneself of the so-called unilateral right to make war. The International Committee of the Red Cross, leading jurists, academics, NGOs and UN agencies concerned with human rights, as well as representatives of many governments, have demanded that the US government clarify the legal situation of the prisoners held for over four years at its naval base Guantanamo Bay, in terms of international laws on Human Rights and of Humanitarian International Law. Political figures such as former US presidents William Clinton and James Carter, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as Nobel literature laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel and various international organizations involved in human rights issues, are calling for the immediate closure of this veritable concentration camp. (A summary of their various pronouncements is provided in Appendix 1 to this chapter) The demands for closure of the detention centres for "illegal combatants" at the US Guantanamo military base got a boost in the media after a report published in the American magazine Times in June 2005 provided details of the interrogation of one of the detainees there, which revealed that inmates were forced to bark like dogs and growl when shown photographs of persons identified as terrorists. The report in Times, an 84-page magazine censored and controlled by the Pentagon, quotes interviews with Mohammed el Qahtani - a Saudi citizen suspected by the US of participating in the September 11 terrorist attacks - who was deported from Florida in August 2001 and subsequently arrested in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan. According to the magazine, between November 2002 and January 2003, Qahtani was tortured for days on end. Among other torments, he was woken in the morning with cold water thrown over his head or with a Cristina Aguilera record played at full volume. The detainee said they forced him to stand for the American national anthem and they shaved his head, as well as shaving off his beard. Asked about the article, US Vice President Cheney said the important thing was that those held in Guantanamo were "bad people" who had been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan or in raids against al Qaeda - in other words, people without rights. Many people, including a growing element in the US power elite, have perceived clearly the long-term damage to the superpower's image done by the brutal policies imposed by the Bush administration's hawks in the so-called war on international terrorism. Examples include remarks by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the most senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, to the effect that Guantanamo had become the main propaganda tool for the recruitment of terrorists worldwide. Florida Republican senator Mel Martinez - representative in the US Senate of the anti-Cuba mafia and cabinet member during President Bush's first term - remarked that Guantanamo had transformed itself into an icon of negative stories that at some stage led one to wonder about its rate of return. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, traditionally sympathetic to the "war on terrorism", said in one of his articles that if you want to gauge the damage done by Guantanamo to the US's reputation abroad, don't read the Arab press, read the British! He adds that when you've finished reading what their closest allies are saying about Guantanamo, take a look at the Australian, Canadian and German press. On 16th February 2006, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, following an investigation by five holders of the Human Rights Commission's special procedures mandates into the situation of detainees held at the illegal US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. These experts had been working on this issue since June 2004. On 25th June 2004, a press release was issued by four of these Commission mechanisms requesting to visit US prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo naval base. During the 61st session of the Human Rights Commission in the spring of 2005, representatives of the US Defense and State Departments approached the various regional groups, saying they were ready to consider requests for visits by Commission rapporteurs to the detention centre at the Guantanamo naval base. At that time, Washington's ostensible willingness to cooperate with Commission mechanisms was used by the European countries as a cynical pretext for voting against a draft resolution tabled by Cuba on the situation of the detainees at the illegal American naval base. Despite the lack of approval for the draft resolution, the experts decided to conduct the investigation anyway, under the powers conferred by their respective mandates. On 28th October 2005, Washington invited just three of these mandate holders to visit the centre. These were the Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief, on torture, and the chairman of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. On 31st October 2005, a UN news service dispatch reported the text of a joint communiqué by the five Human Rights Commission Special Rapporteurs, rejecting the conditions imposed by Washington on the visit to the Guantanamo naval base they had requested in order to investigate the serious accusations of violations of the human rights of the prisoners arbitrarily and illegally detained there. Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, said that the rapporteurs had earlier, in a spirit of compromise, accepted the limitation of a single day's visit (on 6th December), but the banning of interviews in private contravened the terms of reference for fact-finding missions by special procedures and undermined the purpose of an objective and fair assessment of the situation of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. Mr Nowak likened the sort of trip the US government had been allowing to US congressmen and the press, to tourist excursions. The experts decided they would not visit the base under these conditions, saying that would undermine the principles at the heart of the special procedures work and the investigation mechanisms of the UN Human Rights Commission. They were particularly disappointed that Washington had been unable to accept their terms despite having repeatedly stated its commitment to the principles of independence and objectivity that underlie the investigation mechanisms. At various times in 2002 and 2004, the US government refused to allow 6 non-contractual mechanisms of the Commission on Human Rights to visit prisoners in their detention centres in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Washington decided to invite these three rapporteurs only after the question of violation of human rights at the Guantanamo base had hit the headlines, triggering a wideranging international debate and even shocking certain agencies of its ever-faithful and hypocritical ally the European Union, whose parliament passed a resolution in October 2004 condemning the atrocities. On February 4th, 2005 the chairmen of the Human Rights Commission working groups on arbitrary detention and forced disappearances and the Special Rapporteurs on torture, health, independence of judges and lawyers, together with the independent expert on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, issued a declaration denouncing the violations of human rights being committed by the United States in the detention centres at Guantanamo Bay. The UN experts, having refused to accept the humiliating conditions imposed by Washington on their visiting the Guantanamo detention camp in October 2005, used as sources for drawing up the report submitted in February 2006 the accounts of detainees who had been freed and of the lawyers of some of these, as well as reports in the media and documents declassified by the US authorities. A 54-page report published in the website of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (http://www.ohchr.org/), reference E/CN.4/2006/120, deals in its six sections with the following: Section I. - Legal analysis of the mandates of the five experts. The report offers 12 conclusions and 10 recommendations. The conclusions include the following: - The so-called war on terrorism does not constitute an armed conflict under international law. - The indefinite detention of the people held at the Guantanamo Naval Base is entirely without legal foundation. The right of everyone, established by Art. 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, not to be subjected to arbitrary detention or imprisonment, is being violated. - The US authorities are acting as judge, prosecutor and defence counsel in relation to the detainees at the Guantanamo Naval Base. - Washington's redefinition of the concept of torture and the interrogation techniques applied are one of the major causes of concern. - The practice of transferring prisoners to other countries increases the risk of their being victims of torture. - The lack of an impartial investigation into the violations of human rights being committed at Guantanamo and the reliable reports that such violations have taken place heighten the rapporteurs' concern. - The experts express their serious concern regarding the mental and physical health of the detainees. The recommendations include a demand that the US government immediately close the detention centres set up at the Guantanamo Naval Base and either arrange for the detainees to appear before a competent, independent tribunal, or set them free. Washington was quick to challenge the validity of the report and in a letter to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from its permanent representative in Geneva, complained about the procedures adopted for the investigation. Other reactions On 26th April 2005, a parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe approved Resolution 1433 regarding the legality of the detentions at the US naval base in Guantanamo. In the afternoon of 16th February 2006, the European Parliament voted 80 in favour, one against and with one abstention, on a new resolution calling for the closure of the detention centre at Guantanamo and for fair treatment of the people held there (see Appendix II to this chapter). Despite overwhelmingly contrary public opinion, various European governments have still not expressed any disquiet over events at the Guantanamo Naval Base detention centre, and none have taken any action in this regard. Perhaps the prime example is that of British premier Tony Blair, who despite a mandate from the House of Commons to proclaim the UK's opposition to the existence of the centre far and wide, said of Guantanamo on 23rd February last: "I have said it is an anomaly, I have said it should end, and sooner rather than later. I don't think I have got anything more to say on it" [Downing Street Press Conference]. While these protests and pronouncements were being made in various parts of the world, on 28th March 2005 the superpower published a report entitled: "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record 2004 - 2005". This State Department document makes no mention at all of what is happening in Guantanamo. The parodies of justice applied to a few of the Guantanamo inmates include the case of Alí Hamza Ahmad al-Bahlul, a Yemeni accused of being an al-Qaeda network propagandist, who asked to be allowed to conduct his own defence and even refused an interview with Maj. Tom Fleener, the military lawyer detailed to "defend" him. Another such charade was the military court that heard the case against Omar Khadr, a 19-year-old Canadian citizen, accused of killing a field doctor with a thrown grenade during hostilities in Afghanistan four years ago. The military lawyer appointed to conduct his "defence" is a young man of 31 who has never defended anyone in a court of law. The situation is so pathetic that some of the sharpest criticisms of the proceedings come from the defence attorneys themselves. According to Fleener - the lawyer rejected by Bahlul - the tribunals are a farce, because the rules are simply devised to prevent the accused from getting help. Various human rights groups have also criticized these rules because, for example, they allow secret evidence unknown to the prisoner, as well as evidence obtained by torture. In December 2005, President Bush approved a military spending act that included the McCain-Graham-Levin amendment which involved cancelling the right of these detainees even to file habeas corpus suits in the US federal courts. Moreover, Mr Bush requested the Supreme Court to make this law retrospective, so as to annul the 220 cases in which prisoners had challenged the legality of their detention and of their military trial (if any). Although the media spread the idea that the amendment banned torture, in fact it legalized it and established new and extremely sinister legal precedents. What are our grounds for such an assertion? According to various international organizations involved in human rights issues: 1. Washington has not stated clear or acceptable rules as to what constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, while its officials consistently refuse to say whether mock suffocation is torture. This torture method simulates an execution by suffocation and is very often fatal. The torturers cover the victim's face with cellophane and pour water into the mouth, which causes very painful retching. Other methods, such as sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, psychological torture and freezing, are designed to induce insanity, if not directly to kill. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has made it clear that the government will define torture as suits its book. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said Bush told the CNN television network that torture meant deliberately causing severe physical or mental pain, repeating the word 'severe' twice. 2. The legislation includes a new amendment that deprives over 500 Guantanamo inmates of the chance to file applications to stop the torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. It tacitly authorizes the Defense Department to consider evidence obtained by torture or other inhuman methods when assessing the status of the Guantanamo detainees. This would be the first time in American history that Congress has effectively endorsed the use of evidence obtained through torture. 3. Two extra clauses were added before the act was signed. One allows military personnel accused of torturing to avail themselves of the defence that they were following “orders”. The other provides the same facility for CIA agents. According to Marty Lederman, law professor and former Justice Department lawyer, the aim is “to ensure that CIA interrogators cannot be brought before the criminal or civil courts for using techniques approved by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez”. 4. The act provides other legal loopholes. For example, its says interrogators must follow army-manual guidelines. According to a New York Times article in December 2005, the army has brought out a new edition of the manual (the first in 13 years) which includes 10 secret pages on methods of torture. Obviously, this 'anti-torture' law is really an insidious way of legitimizing and legalizing torture under the pretext of doing the opposite. Hunger strikes Since early 2005, the world has been witness to lengthy hunger strikes and attempted suicides among a group of Guantanamo detainees. According to the inmates' lawyers, the hunger strike started in August with the aim of seeking fair trials and of aligning the conditions in the prison with the relevant requirements of the Geneva Convention. According to Defense Department figures, the number of inmates on hunger strike peaked at 131 around the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The numbers fluctuate, but at the end of 2005 the total stood at 84; a month later, it was down to 22, of whom 17 were being force-fed with saline solution via a nasogastric tube. The Defense Department announced, moreover, that the intravenous and nasogastric feeding methods adopted were humane and fell within the sphere of normal medical practice; only in exceptional situations were the tubes used on detainees against their will. According to these sources, “some inmates, due to their character or temperament, showed no willingness to cooperate and had to be immobilized”. However, various detainees' lawyers have cited much larger numbers of hunger strikers. The discrepancies between the accounts could arise from the US authorities' definition of what constitutes a hunger strike. In Guantanamo, an inmate is officially regarded as on hunger strike if he has rejected nine consecutive meals. The lawyers say that some of the prisoners accept one of the nine meals so as to avoid being force fed or getting medical attention. Lt. Col. Jeremy Martin, US Army spokesman at Guantanamo, has rejected these protests, which in his opinion have been made under “orders from al-Qaeda and with the sole aim of grabbing the headlines and pressuring the US government”. According to a New York Times article published on 22nd February 2006, General Bantz J. Craddock, chief of US Southern Command and military commandant of the Guantanamo detention centre, has confirmed that the officials based there adopted more aggressive measures in January, to dissuade the prisoners who had been on hunger strike for months. Although the Guantanamo authorities had been force-feeding the hunger strikers for months, in January they started keeping them in “restraining chairs” for hours, to stop them making themselves vomit on return to their cells. The newspaper added that over two dozen inmates abandoned their hunger strike when “the nasal feeding tubes were inserted and removed so violently that some men bled or fainted”. Thomas B. Wilner, one of the lawyers from the Washington-based Shearman & Sterling practice believed it was obvious that that the US government had put a stop to the hunger strike by the use of force and the most brutal and inhuman treatment. Other measures include locking up inmates in isolation cells, subjected to cold and deprived of blankets, books and other personal articles. The objective in such cases is to prevent the example of the hunger strikers being followed by other detainees. After studying the Defense Department documents, defence lawyers, Mark and Joshua Denbeau published a report on 8th February last saying that the Pentagon had evidence of some hostile act against the United States or its allies in the cases of 45% of the prisoners, while only 8% of those detained were known members of the al-Qaeda organization. The Government of the Republic of Cuba urges the US administration to purge this "moral and legal black hole" which the Guantanamo Naval Base, built on illegally-occupied land, has become The Cuban people is gravely concerned about the fate of those arbitrarily detained in this part of its territory. The Naval Base was part of the spoils of war following the US military intervention and occupation of the island, which prevented the Cuban from becoming truly independent. The Guantánamo naval base is a product of an illegal agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations signed in 1903 —at a time when our people were unable to exercise their sovereignty— between the US administration and the government the neo-colonial power allowed Cuba to have. Such military facilities had been demanded by the United States as a condition for the withdrawal of US troops in an appendix to the constitution rammed down Cuba’s throat: the notorious Platt Amendment. The Agreement for Coaling and Naval stations provided the right “to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as Coaling and Naval stations only, and for no other purpose”. Thirty one years later on May 29th, 1934, under the aegis of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour" policy, the United States and Cuba signed a new treaty regulating their mutual relations, supplanting that of 1903. Nonetheless, the new Treaty involved the continued occupation of the Guantanamo base and ratified the terms of its "lease". Throughout the neo-colonial period, the base was used by the corrupt, brutal governors imposed by the US in disregard of the interests of the Cuban people. Indeed, during 1958, many of the Batista dictatorship's warplanes often refuelled and took on more bombs there so they could go on with bombing the civilian population in eastern Cuba. Following the revolutionary victory in 1959 —the year in which Cuba gained its true independence for the first time, unlike the merely formal independence gained on 20 May 1902— the Guantánamo base became a permanent source of the threats, provocations and violation of the Republic's sovereignty that lie at the heart of the policy the United States began to implement against Cuba with successive acts of aggression, sabotage and other crimes. The Cuban government repeatedly denounced these provocations, addressing its protests not only to the US government but also to the UN, arguing that the US neo-colonial enclave at Guantanamo had never been used in accordance with the fraudulent 1903 treaty based on the Platt Amendment or with the equally invalid 1934 treaty, which proclaimed the “friendly” relations between the two countries. In fact, throughout the last four decades and more, the base has been used for various purposes, none of which have been consistent with the agreement under which the United States justifies its presence in our territory. The base became the cause of various disputes between Havana and the United States. The vast majority of the 3,000-plus Cuban citizens who worked there were sacked and replaced by nationals of other countries. During the revolutionary conflict, shots were often fired from the base into free Cuban territory; Cuban soldiers were killed as a result of these acts and mercenaries hired by the foreign power found sanctuary and support at the facility. It was even the target for a fake attack, something cooked up by the US government in the 1960s and known to US special services as 'Operation Patty'. This ruse, which was thwarted by the Cuban security services, involved sending a force of US agents to fire on the base, to create the impression that it was being attacked by the Cuban Army, thus supplying the pretext for 'retaliatory' aggression. Another time, also by US unilateral decision, tens of thousands of emigrants —Haitian and Cuban nationals who were trying to enter the United States illegally — were kept at the base. In nearly half a century, there has never been a time when conditions have allowed the situation to be calmly, legally, diplomatically reviewed in order to reach the only logical and just solution to this longstanding anomaly: returning this territory occupied against the will of our people to us. A basic principle of Cuban policy on this potentially dangerous, decades-old problem between Cuba and the United States has been to avoid having our justified claim create further tensions. Cuba has made every effort to follow an especially careful, measured policy with regards to this matter in recognition of the fact that in recent years a less tense more respectful atmosphere has developed between the Cuban and US military. The Cuban government’s position on the legal status of the US base at Guantanamo is that, since, legally speaking, it is derived from a lease, the leaseholders were ceded a temporary and not perpetual right over this part of our territory, and that justice for our people demands that, in due course, it must be peacefully returned to Cuba. What is occurring at the Guantanamo naval base is nothing other than an atrocity, an affront to justice and human dignity: detainees are held without charge or trial for an indefinite period, incarcerated in small cells for up to 24 hours a day, handcuffed during the extremely short exercise period, repeatedly interrogated without access to a lawyer and run the risk of being executed after an unfair unappealable trial; their relatives are also victims of cruelty caused by not knowing what is happening to their loved ones, Those classified as "illegal combatants" are held under arbitrary military regulations that permit the torture of prisoners and deprive them of their legal rights such as habeas corpus. They can be held indefinitely without any specific charge, while their lawyers' work is impeded by various restrictions. They are not allowed to call certain witnesses. A defendant who asks for a lawyer other than the one assigned by the military must first plead guilty, which makes a mockery of the principle of presumed innocence. But not all the detainees suffer the same treatment. A clear pattern of arbitrary selection and double standards has emerged. Mr Bush grants some rights to the nationals of countries in the "coalition of the willing". These “fortunate few” are allowed to talk to their lawyers in private, a privilege denied to the rest. How can the Superpower advance its thesis of alleged 'commitment' to the Cuban people’s human rights, while at the same time creating veritable human rights "black hole" on the latter's territory? Cuba reiterates its condemnation of the massive, flagrant and systematic violations of human rights suffered by hundreds of people arbitrarily detained by the US administration in the United States and elsewhere and particularly at the Naval Base it maintains illegally at Guantanamo. On 19 January 2005, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered a Diplomatic Note to the US authorities here in Havana and in Washington; this note roundly denounced this situation and demanded an immediate end to the inhuman, criminal behaviour. By virtue of the moral high ground which it has conquered with its impeccable human rights record and by virtue of the right conferred on it by having sovereignty over all Cuban territory, Cuba denounces these abuses and violations committed day after day by the US government against detainees in the Guantanamo naval base and demands an end to these practices, which are a breach of International Law. The Cuban people supports and fully endorses the call by the international community for a clear and consistent statement on this serious situation. Some recent statements calling for the closure of the detention centre at the Guantanamo naval base and condemning the confining and torture of prisoners there 5th January 2005: In an editorial in its Sunday edition, the New York Times calls on the Bush administration to close down the detention centre it maintains at the Guantanamo naval base. 20th June 2005: In an interview published in the UK's Financial Times, former US president William Clinton expresses the view that the US base at Guantanamo should be cleaned up or shut down; it was time for an end to the reports from there about people being mistreated. He believes there are two very serious practical objections to prisoner abuse: in the first place, “if the US gets a reputation for mistreating people, its own soldiers will be in greater danger”; secondly, “if they mistreat someone, he will eventually say what he knows his persecutors want to hear, just to make them stop”. 18th November 2005: During a London conference called to condemn the torture and arbitrary detentions at Guantanamo, Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the British charity 'Reprieve', who represents some 40 Guantanamo inmates, told the conference it was starting on the hundredth day of the prisoners' hunger strike. He had recently returned from Guantanamo and had received a statement from the British inmate Shaker Aamer, father of four British children, describing how he had been subjected to abuses and humiliations and demanding that the US army stop force-feeding prisoners and let them follow their own path. The lawyer said the British government should be ashamed of itself for refusing to lift a finger to help the ten British detainees held there by force. 2nd December 2005: Former US president James Carter publishes an article entitled "This isn't the real America" in which he says: "Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate 'cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment' on people in U.S. custody". 23rd December 2005: Prompted by James Carter's article, Peace Prize Nobel Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel sends a letter to President Bush in complete agreement with and support for Carter's sentiments. He writes: "Where are you going Mr. President Bush? You are dragging your country and the world to the very limit; you are crossing the frontier of what is possible and becoming a danger to humanity in your zeal to identify as a terrorist everyone who opposes your wishes, when it’s your own policy which uses State Terrorism and the very same mechanisms used during the military dictatorships in Central and South America. We remember the Condor Plan, and the evil methods such as abduction and disappearance. Today several European countries are demanding explanations from the State Department for the use of their territories and airports for clandestine conveyance of people kidnapped by the CIA who are being transported to other countries in order to submit them to torture". 31st December 2005: UN Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak accuses Washington of using cruel methods to force-feed prisoners at Guantanamo on hunger strike. Quoting the lawyers, Nowak says that force-feeding takes place in the inmates' cells, not in hospital. It is not always carried out by suitably-trained doctors, but by nurses or even by the security guards. They say that thick tubes are pushed down into the stomach through the nose, that they are inserted and removed roughly, causing bleeding and vomiting. According to Nowak, if these accounts are true, the treatment is unquestionably cruel. He says the rapporteurs cannot verify the conditions of the detainees if they are not allowed to interact with them; all they can do is ask the guards "Do you torture prisoners?" - hardly the stuff of an objective, fact-finding mission. He adds they are clearly told they can look anywhere, cells included, but not interact - i.e. have direct contact - with the prisoners. 31st December 2005: Mark Thompson, the General Secretary of the Association for the Prevention of Torture, a Geneva-based NGO, tells the BBC that force-feeding of prisoners is regarded as a form of torture. He explains that it is a case of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, adding that the US authorities should bring in negotiators to interview the prisoners. 7th January 2006: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, comments: "an institution like the Guantanamo naval base should not and cannot exist long-term (...) new avenues and methods must be found for the treatment of the prisoners". 12th January 2006: Interviewed on EO-Radio, Netherlands Defence Minister Henk Kamp calls for the closure of the detention centre at the Guantanamo naval base as soon as possible. 14th February 2006: Two important newspapers on America's East Coast, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, publish editorials respectively demanding the closure of Guantanamo and emphasizing its ill repute. In the latter case, the article describes the prison as a cause for shame in the eyes of the whole world and as doing the United States more harm than good in its campaign against terrorism. 16th February 2006: The website of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights publishes a report by five independent Human Rights Commission experts on the situation of the detainees at the illegal US naval base at Guantanamo. It calls on Washington to close the detention centre there immediately and to arrange for the prisoners to appear before a competent, independent court or to be released. 19th February 2006: At its ninth Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the World Council of Churches - a body representing 342 churches, denominations and temple communities in over 100 countries - publishes a document in the name of 400 million Christians worldwide, urging the United States to close the prison it maintains at the illegal Guantanamo naval base. 20th February 2006: The New York Times publishes an editorial condemning the conditions in US prisons and calling for a prison policy consistent with the law and democratic principles. It also says that the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay should be closed down. In Brussels, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council Europe, René van der Linden, expresses his full support for the report by five UN experts denouncing US practices at Guantanamo. Archbishop John Sentamu, second in authority within the Anglican Church, calls for the immediate closure of the detention centre and accuses the United States of breaking international law, in an interview printed in the London-based newspaper The Independent. 23rd February 2006: In an interview broadcast on the Arab radio and television chain Al Jazira, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi accepts the arguments of international figures calling for closure of the US prison at the Guantanamo naval base. "Yes, I discussed this with several of my colleagues, and I too believe they should lose no time in closing down these centres where episodes are taking place that everybody condemns", he said. 23rd February 2006: A report by the UK's House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs concludes "that the continued use of Guantanamo Bay as a detention centre outside all legal regimes diminishes the USA's moral authority (...) We recommend that the Government make loud and public its objections to the existence of such a prison regime". The Committee called on Blair's ministers to leave no doubt as to their opposition to what was happening at Guantanamo Bay. 24th February 2006: The Italian agency ANSA reports that the US Department of Defense is to comply with a judicial decision compelling it to disclose the names of the prisoners held in the Guantanamo detention camp, while the Supreme Court had rejected the Bush administration's attempts to obstruct the course of justice. Resolution of the European Parliament passed on 16th February 2006 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
The European Parliament, - Having regard to its previous resolutions on the rights of detainees at Guantanamo to a fair trial, and, in particular, to its resolution of 7 February 2002 on the detainees in Guantanamo Bay (1), and its recommendation to the Council of 10 March 2004 on the Guantanamo detainees’ right to a fair trial (2) , 1. Calls on the US Administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and insists that every prisoner should be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law and tried without delay in a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent, impartial tribunal; 2. Condemns all forms of torture and ill-treatment and reiterates the need to comply with international law; 3. Stresses that contemporary terrorism, particularly global terrorism directed against democracies and their populations, poses a threat to the basic and fundamental human rights our societies enjoy; 4. Reiterates that the fight against terrorism, which is one of the priorities of the Union and a key aspect of its external action, can only be successfully pursued if human rights and civil liberties are fully respected; 5. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the High Representative for the CFSP, the parliaments of the Member States, the United Nations Secretary-General and the President and Congress of the United States of America.
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